Musings of A Shattered Heart
by bloodfangsoflust
Summary: Jareth contemplates his feelings for Sarah, wondering why he has clung to her for so long.


**_Disclaimer:_** If I owned Jareth, don't you think I'd stop writing fanfics about him?

Author's Note: This is a series that is based on songs- so a series of song fics. When I say "M" I mean M. These fics are rated for sex, rape, adult content, horrific situations, torture, and gore. You have been warned.

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Jareth raised the cigarette to his lips and took a long drag. He didn't know how the humans in this time period could get addicted to them, seeing as they caused so many of their deaths. But he enjoyed them. The gentle drag, inhale, exhale motions helped calm his inner turmoil. And turmoil it was. His thoughts, scattered as they were, always and ever focused on Sarah.

_She's like the wind_

He loved her. He had come to terms with that epiphany some time ago. Too late to change anything, he had lost her as she won his game. She had chosen the squalling brat over him. He had offered her everything, and she had refused. He had watched her from the shadows since then.

_Through my tree_

He could not take her any longer. She had renounced his claim over her when she chose Toby. Damn that boy! Why, _why_ had she chosen him? She had been the last to come through his Labyrinth. By beating him, the true magic of the place had taken over. The game now won, the Labyrinth had no true purpose anymore.

_She rides the night_

Jareth took another pull on his cigarette. She had refused him time and time again. So why couldn't he simply let go? He answered that question instantly. She was surprisingly like him in more aspects than he would ever have thought possible. Sarah was not a true daylight person. Nor was she a true moonlight person. She was a little of both, and that piqued Jareth's curiosity. Soon after inquisitiveness came lust.

_Next to me_

Lust was a harsh master. He had wanted her. That was the true reason behind the masquerade. He had convinced himself at first he was only trying to seduce her into giving up the child. Later, he realized as she was searching the goblin-made-humans for him, that he was in love with her. That emotion had shocked him. How could he, the Goblin King, love another?

_She leads me through moonlight_

He followed her progress through the Labyrinth obsessively, hoping the forbidden: that she might actually give up her quest and beg him to take her. That she would forget Toby and come to him. He had been willing to put the child back where he got it if she would stay with him. He had even believed when he sang to her at the ball, in the Stairway Foyer, that she would take him. The look in her eyes as she had watched him, found him at the masque, looked at him in the Dreaming Room….

_Only to burn me with the sun_

But she had refused him. She had wanted the child. Jareth crushed the cigarette between his teeth, hot anger and sharp, painful loss raging through him. He had offered her dreams, her hopes, his love, his life….and she had spurned his gift in favor of the brat. Hadn't she wished him away in the first place? Hadn't he done as she asked, only to be rebuffed in his attempts to gain compensation?

_She's taken my heart_

When she returned to the Aboveground with the child, he had died inside. He had become a shell of a man for far too long. It was only when he realized what had happened when she left him did he begin to come back to himself. He, Jareth, the King of the Goblins, had fallen in love with a mortal human girl. He had gone half-mad in that time- hearing her voice in his ear, feeling her skin on his own. He ached for her, and he couldn't tell her.

_She doesn't know what she's done_

He never could. He would never have the chance. He was an immortal, and though it had only been a few years, Sarah had begun the aging process. She was ultimately human, after all, and he would never be able to keep her. So he had no choice but to watch silently as she began to grow up. He would be forced to watch her die as well, and then he would slowly start to die as well. A gust of wind came up and blew the exhaled smoke in another direction. It died quickly, but Jareth only barely kept the need to scream in check.

_Feel her breath in my face_

He wanted that wind to be her. He wanted that wind to be her breath as he drove her closer and closer to the edge, over the edge, sheathed within her so deeply there was no way to tell where she ended and he began. That thought stirred his body to a response, and he groaned. He had not touched a woman since Sarah had left, unable to bear it not being her eyes, her face, her body.

_Her body close to me_

Jareth lit another cigarette for lack of a better thing to do. Sarah was out of his reach permanently. The rules of the game stated clearly that if he was renounced, he could not ever touch them again. He could watch her, but he could not be with her. Never again was he allowed to let her know he was there, lest the ancient magics that bound him to the Labyrinth die and he become human. He allowed himself to think of her moaning beneath him.

_Can't look in her eyes_

He could never again see her stormy grey eyes, and that was perhaps what bothered him most. There was such a welter of emotions among those eyes every time she had looked at him. There was fear. There was sometimes hatred. Towards the end, though, there was lust. And Jareth sometimes liked to fancy he had seen love in her eyes.

_She's out of my league_

He shed a single tear at the thoughts. He was in love with her, and she would never be able to know. He could not risk becoming human. At his ancient age, he would instantly crumble to dust. _'Made of dust, and unto dust thou shalt return,'_ he thought bitterly. If only the humans knew how true that line was!

_Just a fool to believe_

He couldn't believe she'd chosen the child. He had begun to accept that she loved the brat more than the budding love between the two of them, but….how could one give that up for such a thing? He still refused to accept that she truly wanted the child. Of course, he kicked himself mentally for those thoughts. If she had wanted him, would she not have simply allowed him to win the game?

_I have anything she needs_

And what had he to offer her anyway? He had presented her with his heart, and she had torn it into little tiny shreds. He had strangely never felt the need for revenge, though. She had made her choice, as hundreds before her had made the choice. They had all chosen to lose their charges. She had chosen Toby. Again, damn that child!

_She's like the wind_

How? She had blown into his life like a hurricane, turning his world inside out and upside down before he'd realized what had happened. Then, just when he had recognized his need for her, she had blown right back out. She had never given him a chance to lay out his full offer. _"Fear me, love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave."_ He'd said to her.

_I look in the mirror_

Jareth set fire to the box of smokes he'd purchased earlier. There was no true need for them. Besides, as the so-called "Surgeon General" warned, 'smoking causes lung cancer'. He saw his reflection flicker in the flamelight in a glass window not far from his position beneath a burned-out streetlamp. There was something about his face that set him off. It was calm, composed- no one who passed him by (not that anyone would at this time of night) would be able to sense his entanglement.

_And all I see_

He contemplated the reflection there for a moment. He looked as he always had: thin lips, platinum hair, a slightly sharp nose, mismatched eyes. But there was something in his eyes that had never been there before. After years of waiting under the lamp, he had finally given up. He had never been able to touch her. And in his waiting Underground, he had never known exactly what she went through Above.

_Is the other man_

Sarah would never come to him. She never would, because she couldn't. In more ways than one. He had sat for far too long, waited for too long. How would she even remember her experiences in the Labyrinth but in dreams and half-forgotten tales whispered to children not her own?

_With only a dream_

His need for Sarah had gotten in the way of his living. She had been in his thoughts constantly since leaving the Labyrinth. He had watched her for a little while after she left, but could not keep up the habit. He loved her too damn much to sit and watch her live her life without him.

_Am I just foolin' myself_

He had watched her fall on hard times, had watched her climb higher, had wanted her through everything. So why did he continue to want her? She would barely remember him. It was foolish thinking to believe she would still love him. The love they had shared had been brief and momentary- nothing compared to many things.

_And she'll start the pain_

The answer came to him quickly. He loved her because he had to love her. If he didn't, how would he stay himself?

_Livin' without her_

He had lasted so long only because he loved her so deeply. He longed for her constantly, and that longing was the only thing that gave him the stamina for immortality. He managed to survive day by day only because he loved her the way he did.

_I go insane_

He was going half-mad once again. He had lived for too long without her with him, by his side. He had wanted her to be his Queen. Had wanted her next to him for all eternity. Of course, that was never possible. She was human, and there was no way on Earth to change that. Not anymore, anyway. And only one magic in the Ungerground could change that, but had he used it, she wouldn't be Sarah anymore. Not his Sarah. And he couldn't bear that thought.

_Feel the breath in my face_

_The body close to me_

_Can't look in her eyes_

_She's outta my league_

_Just a fool to believe _

_I have anything she needs_

_She's like the wind_

If only he had told her out right before she left his castle instead of dancing around the subject. _"I can't live within you,"_ he'd sang to her, but he had longed to try. It was what he truly wanted. But there was the problem of mortality. Even though he had wanted her, he could never have had her. She was mortal, and he could never have survived after she had died. Letting her go was his only option. And yet, he had foolishly tried to keep her with him. He growled under his breath. Selfishly. And then what? He had been relieved when she refused him as well as crushed. If she had given herself to him, he would have been forced to watch her die. Not that any of that mattered now.

_Feel your breath in my face_

_Your body close to me_

_Can't look in your eyes_

_You're outta my league_

_Just a fool to believe_

Now, Jareth stood on a small hill in the Aboveground, looking at her headstone. He had waited for too long. He had forgotten her mortality until it was too late. He had let her down- he knew it. Her headstone read:

"There are the dreamers of the mind

And there are the dreamers of the heart.

Sarah, beloved of all, was both."

_She's like the wind_

She had gone some time ago. The Goblin King knelt before her grave and ran his fingers over the words. Then, after all the years spent in torturous solitude, after not a single teardrop, the Goblin King began to sob for his lost love.


End file.
